Vortex
At a recent social event I met a woman who was, unmistakably, very intelligent. The intelligence pulled me in quickly and I was eager to discover how this particular mind was applying itself to the world. She said that in that in school, she studied a particular scientific discipline, as well as ethics, and focused on the overlap between the two. I began grilling her on the ethical side, because I’d never encountered someone who studied ethics in school. I consider being ethical something all people must do, all the time — what exactly can be gained by studying it?
The answer was pretty upsetting. The purpose of studying ethics was to accumulate a stockpile of theories, memes, and anecdotes which emphasize the premise that one never really knows for sure. What’s wrong for one person is right for someone else. The senses can’t be trusted. Whether something is ‘ethical’ can be determined by studying trends and seeing what others implicitly consider ethical, or by testing its consistency with the legal framework. And so on — any question I raised to challenge her (“So is it wrong to enslave a human?”) was met with an immediate, automatic response — in this case, that “Someone, somewhere” could explain why their particular agenda was ok, and hey, since we all experience the world from our own unique perspective, who can really say something is ‘wrong’ for sure?
Me: “I’m sorry … you’ve given up.”
Her: “I never gave up. This is how I’ve always felt.”
Only this morning did it occur to me the particular role such a creature might play in the modern global economy. There are corporations who want to do things that are sometimes bad, right? There are governments with similar intentions, right? Well, such organizations are not pure democracies — some minority leads the majority. Leadership requires thought, or, at least, the appearance of thought. A CEO who wants to defraud millions of customers might be a business expert, but not so confident on morality; maybe he didn’t study it. When he proposes a morally indefensible measure, and upper management recognizes that it might be unethical, what better than a university-certified ethics expert to reply, looking them straight in the face and with total conviction, that the mind is inherently incapable of making such decisions, that technically it’s not illegal right now, and besides, they did this in Canada twice last year without running into any trouble.
Fuck, if I were trying to get away with shady shit on a massive scale, I would hire this girl in a second. A super brain and vortex where the conscience should be. We can do whatever we want and nobody can make us feel guilty, not even ourselves.
I wonder if that’s how it really works out there.
-
stuff-to-think-about reblogged this from jakelodwick and added:
I’m interested...am currently studying both philosophy
-
stuff-to-think-about liked this
-
thalasso-spa liked this
-
best-bonus-games liked this
-
kevinmosley liked this
-
iamsonya liked this
-
kaylife liked this
-
oats liked this
-
iluvthis liked this
-
ekstasis liked this
-
georgr said:
So you are saying there is an absolute definition of “(being) ethical”? What is it, and why so?
-
tyler liked this
-
paintyourbrain reblogged this from jakelodwick and added:
unfortunate part of this, is that the politics...business didn’t start until we made PC...
-
somethingbysomeone reblogged this from ronenreblogs
-
dalasverdugo liked this
-
wjr liked this
-
drewxor liked this
-
ryanb liked this
-
carolinemartin said:
I would like this except I don’t want people to think I’m liking the original post.
-
brianquinn liked this
-
zzellers liked this
-
likeapairofbottlerockets reblogged this from jakelodwick
-
underpaid liked this
-
themadeshop liked this
-
apophatic liked this
-
adamjtaylor liked this
-
petervidani liked this
-
suitep liked this
-
endonend liked this
-
jackzerby liked this
-
andrewglennflavin liked this
-
driven47 reblogged this from jakelodwick
-
davegreer liked this
-
markieinmilwaukee liked this
-
kavalierandclay liked this
-
nathanjohnson liked this
-
mokin liked this
-
lifeasamusical said:
She’s right, ethics depend upon mores of society, which change over time. For example, apparently it’s now ethical for one branch of the government to “openly” bribe members of another branch to influence policy votes and elections.
-
mynylife liked this
-
nomoreundead liked this
-
realitydistortion liked this
-
ronenreblogs reblogged this from jakelodwick
-
djnewstyleshow said:
Emotion never clouds her decisions. There is no passion, no excitement. Her intelligence has been harvested by a system that will use her to make their brand of sense out of the meaningless data they collect. She’s C3PO.
-
heynic liked this
-
jjaacckkssoonn liked this
-
sostark said:
How have you come to be so absolutely sure of your own beliefs? You always seem so skeptical of everyone else’s, but 100% confidant in your own. How do you come about to the ‘right’ beliefs?
-
stefantueshaus liked this
-
bryanmckay said:
Ethics are completely relative and always shifting. That doesn’t mean we get to ignore our basic concepts of morality and ethical behavior. If we don’t at least maintain that, society collapses. I’m sure as an ethics student she understands that.
-
jamesnord liked this
-
autoduncan liked this
- Show more notes
